The Bushwick trailer. The cross streets where the motorcycle turns the corner are Starr and Wyckoff.

"This is Bushwick, baby," says detective Alberto Rojas as he drives down Knickerbocker Avenue. He’s just been at the scene of a crime: the murder of a runaway Mexican-American teen. "I’ve been working in this neighborhood for 20 years. It just gets dirtier and nastier and more fucked up every day."

This line is from the new independent movie called Bushwick, premiering in May 2010. The majority of the movie is filmed in Bushwick, including car chases, conversations in María Hernández Park, and shots of the J train.

Bushwick has gotten some screen time in numerous movies before, like The French Connection, American Gangster, and Malcolm X, and was Willie Lopez’s neighborhood in Ghost, but this is the first full-length film that’s filmed primarily here.

The synopsis is basically this: Margarita Fuentes is a runaway 16-year-old who was murdered in an apartment. Two detectives must solve the case by talking to everyone who knew her: former teachers, friends, neighbors, her immigrant family, etc. Besides the investigation, the plot is mainly built around the relationship of the two detectives, the heritage of Margarita, and of course, the neighborhood.

BushwickBK spoke with writer, director, and producer Luis Landivar.

Does the entire movie take place in Bushwick?
The film takes place in NYC, but Bushwick is the vast majority of the film. Some of it was shot in Jackson Heights and we did some interior locations in Long Island City.

What were some of the locations you used in Bushwick?
The whole Bushwick area was our landscape. We shot near the Bushwick Houses projects in addition to the industrial core by Flushing. We shot near Wyckoff Avenue and Starr Street. We were able to get permission from a factory that was close by and we shot a lot of our scenes there. Specifically there’s an extended surveillance scene that takes place with a motorcycle and undercover police car. María Hernández Park is also prominently displayed in the film. There is also a factory on Evergreen where we did many of our shoots, I think it’s off of George Street.

Do you live in Bushwick?
No, but lots of our crew lived in Bushwick. I’d say five or six people of our crew were from Bushwick. I worked in Bushwick for a long time in the educational field, and my father had a business selling furniture in Bushwick for almost 15 years. It was called Hermano Miguel and it stood where the White Castle stands now on Myrtle and Gates. I used to do deliveries to people’s houses all over the area. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to shoot on location in Bushwick, because you can’t represent that on a film set. There’s nothing that’s going to give the authenticity except for being there and for shooting there.

What was your inspiration for filming in Bushwick and calling it Bushwick?
The main thing about Bushwick is that it’s an immigrant enclave. For the last 150 years, it’s been a place for immigrants to assimilate and get a foothold into the American dream. In the 1960s, because of the displacement and decline of the industrial sector, it wasn’t able to grow, and there were a lot of problems in the ’70s with the riots and there were fires going on everywhere in Bushwick, and then in the ’80s you also had some of the problems with drugs and crack. There were burned down properties and vacant lots everywhere. Then with the ’90s, you had more growth, with people trying to come back to the cities and transforming the area back to residential use. The film itself is an expression of this and the idea of renewal, but also of decay. Bushwick is tough.  

Tell me a little bit more about your parents. When did they come to Bushwick?
My father is Ecuadorian and he came to Bushwick in 1969. He lived with my grand uncle. My mother is from the Philippines and came to Bushwick in 1970 where she met my father. They lived there for about a year, and then moved into the city where my father opened a store on the Upper East Side.

Do they have stories from that first year here?
Oh sure. It’s actually not a good story. There was a break-in to the house, and that’s why they moved to the Upper East Side. It wasn’t a good thing. My grand uncle lived there for probably, I would say 25 years. Through the late ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. My cousin actually still works in the area. He’s an air conditioning repair person.

Does he have a lot of stories?
Yeah, in the early ’90s when my father had his business in Bushwick, my grand uncle worked in the store as well, so he would tell us some of the things that went on over a Saturday beer. He used to tell us stories about that time. He was old. He died about two years ago at 87.

Any favorites?
About the danger? Well, the stories are more about the precautions they used to take. He would tell us stuff like you wouldn’t be able to be outside after nighttime. If it was like after 8 o’clock you had to be in your house, because of the fact that it was so dangerous out at nighttime. My experience being an educator in the area, or helping my father, it was never to the effect of not being able to be outside. I think it was a new dawn of the area. That’s some of the things we talk about in the film.

Tell me a little more about the process for writing the screenplay. Did you do much research?
Well it’s a genre film. The detective film genre has always fascinated me, and I think having a realistic setting of actually living in Bushwick, breathing the air of Bushwick, definitely was an inspiration for the film. As far as the process of research, it was the stories of my grand uncle and the experience of my parents as real immigrants, in addition to my experience as an educator. I’ve heard hundreds of stories of my students’ lives. I would say that it was more testimonial research. The things that I saw and conceptualized gave life to the screenplay.

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